I was attempting to sync footage from a 3-camera wedding today (usually takes me all of 2 minutes to do this), but I ran into the most bizarre issue.

If I sync the audio between the cameras, the video only matches up for 2 of them. The wide angle, unmanned camera won't match up. To be clear, the AUDIO from it matches up perfectly with the audio from the other two cameras, but the video does not.

There are no dropped frames. No visible video glitches. Nothing.

To give you a better idea of how crazy this is, if you watch the video of the first couple to walk down the aisle the lyrics and music that you hear is different between the wide angle camera and the other two cameras. I have no idea how this is even possible. I showed it to my wife and her mouth just dropped open. It's like something from the Twilight Zone.

Any ideas on how this can happen?

Thats pretty crazy. Did you shoot all the same settings (60i 24p etc.)? might have to do a very low speed change on the footage then if you did shoot all the same.

All 3 cameras were Canon GL2's and all were using the exact same settings all the way down to white balance and exposure. The only way I can explain what I'm seeing is if the camera somehow recorded the audio and video on a delay for some reason, or that when I captured the tape the audio and video were captured on a delay from each other.

I've been shooting 3-camera weddings for 5 seasons and I've never seen something like this and have no other way to explain it. I'm dumbfounded.

ANY chance your audio and video got "nudged" on the timeline? Can't think of anything else that would desync the two. Have you tried reloading the video to disk again, or tried using a different camera to dump the tape, maybe the one it was recorded in?

I've had this happen several times. It seems to happen when I turn the cam on and try to record right away. At least it is a quick fix though...

Audio and video did NOT get nudged on the timeline. This was my first thought so I just brought everything back in fresh. Same problem.

Also, all of the cameras were on and ready for at least 15 minutes before recording started, so it wasn't a problem like you described, Patrick. Thanks for the idea, though.

In the end it was a fairly simple fix. I'm just more concerned that I don't know what happened in the first place. Very strange issue.

Could be that the camera needs a service if you've been using it for a while, but thats if it happens again.

What do you mean the music and lyrics sounded different? Was the audio from the unmanned camera somehow shifted with respect to the video?

if you hadn't been shooting 5 seasons of weddings i would have said it was either:

(1) acoustic propagation delay: ~1ft/ms --> ~1000ft/sec
or
(2) potential digital delay from audio recorded off a mixing board

Yang, what I'm saying is that on two of the cameras the portion of the song that is playing when the first couple walks down the aisle is different than what the 3rd camera recorded. In other words, it's like the video on the 3rd camera recorded just fine but the ALL the audio just got shifted on the tape by like 10-15 seconds. When watching the scene I'm hearing a different part of the song on the different cameras.

Ali, thanks for the ideas. It's definitely neither of those, though. The audio is literally off by 10-15 seconds and I wasn't pulling audio from a board. It's all ambient.

WOW, Travis...
Well, if it's on the tape, that only leaves the camera - and that's a heckuva "glitch" to be 10-15 seconds off!

But that's all it could be - the camera delayed either the audio or the video as it recorded... it's digital after all, so those 1's and 0's really got scrambled!

There's only one technically approved solution... you must sprinkle some holy water on that particular cam before the the next wedding!! Lest the glitch haunt you! <wink>

Yeah, holy water sounds good right about now. I sure hope this is a random one-time issue.

yes, you can take comfort in the fact that at least they were playing the same song...

next year's DV Horror Challenge! The Haunted GL2 (cue organ...)